Today, the Biden administration proposed a billionaire’s tax to cover for an economic package. NBC News and ABC News both covered the topic, NBC in the form of an article by Dartunorro Clark and Leigh Ann Caldwell, and ABC News in form of a broadcast story.

Whereas the lead in the article only contains key facts – the “why”, “how,” “when”, and “who” (also, the what is mentioned in the title) -, the introduction of the video is more aimed to get the audience’s attention. A speaker in the studio briefly mentions the “when?”, “who?”, “what?”, and “why?” but then also hints at a conflict by introducing legal and political questions.

The structure of the article and the video is kind of similar. The tax is first introduced and then explained. However, in the video the first proposal made a few days ago is explained right after that, whereas in the article, it is only briefly referred to towards the end. Instead, the explanation of the tax is followed by a quote by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden talking about the reasoning behind the proposal. In both, some questions concerning the passing of the proposal and two moderate senators that need to be convinced are talked about later on. 

The broadcast story is close to two minutes in length. It is hard to compare its length to the article’s length. I’d say it is pretty similar, but the article probably contains a bit more information. For example, it gives more context regarding the economic package, the idea behind the tax, and what it would take for the proposal to pass. On the other hand, the explanation of the billionaire’s tax and the second proposal is more detailed than in the article. Another difference is that the article contains quotes by Ron Wyden and Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Apart from that, the differences in content are very small. 

In contrast to the article, sound and pictures obviously play a role in the broadcast story. There is a reporter in a studio and another reporter in front of the White House talking about the tax. When one of them explains the tax, there are some graphics in the background that help get the grasp of it easier.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/top-democrat-releases-details-proposed-billionaires-tax-n1282465

https://abcnews.go.com/Video

Trump to launch new social media platform TRUTH Social
By James Clayton (BBC)

The article addresses former US President Donald Trumps’ plans to launch his own social media company named TRUTH Social. The author also gives some background about Trump’s social media history and evaluates his statements and plans regarding the network.

The article was released the same day Trump made his plans public. In addition, Trump, as a former and very controversial US President, is obviously very prominent, and a lot of people are interested in what he does and says. Thus, the topic is definitely newsworthy.
I think the author did a great job writing in a style that appeals to today’s audience. Not only is the text in general very short, but the paragraphs also consist of no more than two sentences. The language is also as simple as possible. It doesn’t contain any transitions or descriptive words, and the sentence structure is basic. Overall, the reader doesn’t have to put much effort into reading the article.
Furthermore, the author included some quotes, including some from Trump himself, which I thought made the article more authentic.
Usually, articles should be neutral and objective, but it’s good that this one isn’t, in my opinion. In general, I believe that truth is more important than objectivity if it’s evident. In addition, the author is a specialist in the field of technology and seems to know what he’s talking about. Therefore, I liked that he criticized Trump’s statements and questioned his plans.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58990330

Whether for climate change, animal welfare, or health reasons – more and more people decide to cut meat products off their diet, and many even choose to go vegan.

A vegan diet is defined as a diet that “excludes all forms of animal exploitation,” meaning it doesn’t involve meat or any other products derived from animals, such as anything that contains milk or eggs.

The number of vegans around the world is constantly increasing. However, there are certain regional differences when it comes to veganism. For example, it’s considered to be far more popular in Germany than in a lot of places in the United States.

“People in Germany are more open to the subject, more informed, and more advanced than here,” says Lisann Evert, a German student here at Morningside University in Sioux City, Iowa. “The meat consumption is definitely higher, especially more thoughtless. It’s not like people don’t care at all. They do care if they drive past an animal transporter, but when the food is on the plate, they don’t think about the animals at all.”

Evert came to the US from Germany this fall. She has been following a vegan diet for about one and a half years. “Germany offers a lot of plant-based options. Supermarkets are full of vegan products. Pudding, yogurt, milk, cheese, sausage, schnitzel, gyros – there are substitute products for everything,” Evert describes. 

Germany is rated the fifth-best country for vegans in 2021 by Chef’s Pencil. Even though Germany is well-known for its schnitzels and sausages, it also leads in the production of meat substitutes and plant-based food. With close to 10% of the population considering themselves vegetarian and about 1.6% vegans, the country has the highest rates in Europe – and the numbers increase rapidly.

Conny Wagner lives in Berlin, the city that was named the vegan capital of the world in 2017. She turned vegan in March 2019. Yet, it’s not like she wasn’t confronted with prejudices or misconceptions at all. 

“It was obviously an extreme change for my family and friends. I constantly heard questions like “what can you even eat now?”, “where do you get your protein?”, and “isn’t it unhealthy to not eat fish or eggs?” Thank God I was able to clear up these things,” Wagner says.

In general, though, she believes it’s easy to live vegan in Berlin. Many restaurants offer vegan meals. The selection of vegan products is constantly increasing, and you can buy them in almost every store.

At Morningside, on the other hand, things look a bit different. For Lisann Evert, keeping her diet balanced and diverse at the same time is harder now. Even though she acknowledges that big markets here have some vegan products, she complains about the lack of options on campus. 

On good days, she can eat a healthy vegan diet in the cafeteria, knowing her body is getting what it needs. On other days, not so much. “Sometimes, I have to cope with eating the exact same three days in a row,” she notes.

Jil Hellerforth, another German student, agrees. “It’s hard in the cafeteria. Often you can only eat a salad with oil. It’s not enough to have some plant-based milk. You can’t keep a diverse, healthy diet,” she argues. “Cheese, milk, or eggs – they put some kind of animal product in everything. They could easily make more vegan food, but they just don’t think about it,” she adds.

Hellerforth is in her second year at Morningside. The past year, she has tried talking to the university and convince them to offer more vegan meals, but since nothing has really changed, she stopped trying. Now, she mostly buys food on her own and prepares it in her residence hall or in her friends’ houses off-campus.

Besides that, Hellerforth states that the mindset of students here is very different compared to back home. According to her, there are prejudices in both places, but there are more people that are not informed about veganism or don’t understand it at all around here. “They say: “well, if you don’t eat meat, I’ll just eat twice as much,” and stuff like that.”

On the contrary, there was a huge demand for more vegan food by Berlin’s student population, of which 13.5% are keeping a vegan diet. As a result, Berlin university canteens will go almost meat-free in the future with a 68% vegan menu and only one meat option four days a week.

Clearly, even though veganism is on the rise all over the planet, being a vegan is definitely easier in some places than it is in others – and Morningside obviously has a long way to go.

I go to the stadium every day. Normally, I go down there at 5:30 pm for practice. At that time, it would be very humid down there, and about 45 people, coaches and other players, would be there with me. While we put our gear on, the football team would slowly finish their practice and leave. When we’re cooling down after practice, the men’s soccer team would come down and start their warm-up. There would be a lot of noise all the time – soccer balls getting kicked, people talking.

Then, the other day, I went down to the stadium in the morning before class. The place didn’t look much different, but it felt different. Unlike most afternoons, it was still cold, even though the sun was already up. I’d say about 45 degrees, which is very low compared to the 73 degrees we had later that day. Even though I was running on the track, I was freezing more than I was sweating. My nose hurt a bit from breathing the cold air, but I enjoyed it because it felt fresh instead of humid and sweaty. Another thing I found very unusual was the silence. There was only one other runner down there. Apart from the wind blowing through the stadium, I didn’t hear any noises, in contrast to all the noises when there are other people down there. It’s funny how similar and different a place can be at the same time when you visit it under unusual circumstances.

Loud rustling of plastic. Something cold and soft inside the bag. Before you open a pack of monster buddies you can only hear it and feel the gummies a little bit. You can’t smell, see, or taste the candy. Not yet.

Then, your other senses come into play. You stick your nose into the slightly opened bag and smell a mixture of fruits, sugar, and chemistry. It smells unhealthy. As you look into the bag you see little gummies in the form of monsters in a variety of colors, from blue over orange and red to green. You take one out and start to squeeze it. You take some more and start to play with them. You notice they’re elastic and sticky. The gummies themselves don’t make much noise, just the bag. The only thing left to do is to taste them – they taste like they smell. Very chemical and fruity – like trash.

Veganism at Morningside vs. Veganism in Germany

Whether for climate change, animal welfare, or health reasons – more and more people decide to cut meat products off their diet. In fact, many even choose to not eat any animal products at all and go vegan.
However, there are certain regional differences when it comes to veganism. Whereas there is a big variety of vegan options in some places, it is very hard to find vegan products in others. For example, how is it to be vegan here on campus compared to Germany? Let three people tell you about their experiences.

A vegan diet is defined as a diet that “excludes all forms of animal exploitation,” meaning it doesn’t involve meat or any other products derived from animals, such as anything that contains milk or eggs.

Germany was found the fifth-best country for vegans in 2021 by Chef’s Pencil. In addition, four German cities secured a top 15 spot in the city rankings. Even though Germany is well-known for its schnitzels and sausages, it also leads in the production of meat substitutes and plant-based food.
With close to 10% of the population considering themselves vegetarian, and about 1.6% vegans, the country has the highest rates in Europe – and the numbers continue to increase. From 2016 to 2020, the number of vegans has doubled.

Conny Wagner lives in Berlin, the city that was named the vegan capital of the world in 2017. She has been following a plant-based for number years.
Experiences

In the US, the number of vegans in the population has increased drastically over the past years. Nevertheless, Iowa belongs to the least vegan-friendly states in the US. Number of restaurants with vegan options

Experiences of two students from Germany, comparing being vegan here at Morningside with being vegan back at home in terms of options and other people’s mindsets

Of course, it is hard to compare options in a school canteen to food in Germany as a country. However, about 13.5% of Berlin’s students are keeping a vegan diet, according to statistics. As there was a huge demand, the city’s universities will go almost meat-free in the future, with a 68% vegan menu and only one meat option four days a week.

From conversations with a serial killer, over corruption in sheriff departments to crazy prison stories – Former correctional officer and now Criminal Justice Professor John Gonsler talks about his experiences in a room full of college students.

Gonsler agreed to talk about his experiences in front of a very curious journalism class on Tuesday. Though he admitted being a little shy, he willingly answered everybody’s questions and definitely made for a good interviewee.

“I thought it was cool. I thought it was interesting,” one of the students said.

Gonsler is teaching in his third semester at Morningside University in Sioux City, Iowa but his career began long before that. After getting his bachelor’s degree at Michigan State University he worked for the Genesee County Sheriff department in Flint, Michigan for about two years before he quit. Why? Because the sheriff was “dirtier like a pig’s dick”.

According to him, it was a very corrupt department and not representative to that extent. However, “there are corrupt cops in not corrupt departments,” he says. “If I was in a different department, I would’ve been a corrupt cop.”

Gonsler then talked about his time as a correctional officer in a medium security prison. He found out pretty soon it wasn’t for him either. Yet, he made some remarkable memories, which telling by the interested look on their faces, some laughs here and there, and the many questions, the students clearly enjoyed to hear about. “I liked the stories about when he was a correctional officer,” one of them commented.

When asked to tell an interesting story about this time, Gonsler answered: “I was there for six months and I could write a fucking book series on interesting stories. Do you want violence, do you want rape, do you want disgusting? It’s gonna have to be a little bit more specific than that.” In the end, he decided to tell them about a prisoner holding baby birds as pets and boiling them in a hot pod because they needed a bath.

After that job, Gonsler decided to stop working in law enforcement. Instead, he went back to college and did his master’s in Anthropology at Indiana State University. Since his master’s thesis was about serial killers, he reached out to some of them.

Ted Kaczynski, also known as the “Unabomber”, actually wrote back to him. “I was probably the only person that was happy to receive mail from him,” Gonsler joked.

Well, those are the kinds of experiences you can make in criminal justice.

My last conversation happened over breakfast in the cafeteria this morning. I talked to some guys, mostly Brazilians but also another German, of the soccer team about their plan to go to Chicago for Thanksgiving. It ended pretty quickly because I was heading to class. I still ended up being late, but what else is new?

‘It was scary at first’: social media users on the Facebook outage

By Clea Skopeliti and Rachel Obordo (The Guardian)

The article addresses the worldwide Facebook outage this Monday. For the most part, three people comment on the outage and the impact it had on them.

The topic is very news-worthy, given that it is related to a recent event impacting people all over the world.
I like that the authors introduce the issue they’re talking about by summarizing what happened at the beginning. Thus, everybody can understand what the people whose stories are depicted in the article are referring to.
In general, I found the article to be very unusual, considering that quotes make up for almost all of the text. I, personally, think it’s too much quoting. Instead, the authors should have paraphrased what the three individuals said and picked out some good quotes. I simply didn’t enjoy reading an article written in that style, even though I understand that other people might.
What I liked is the shortness of the article, and, especially, that differing points of view are reflected. Two of the three people have been negatively affected by the outage, but not for the same reason, and one person even found a lot of positives in it.